Man Animal Thing - Schaffer, Alfred

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Biographie:
Alfred Schaffer is one of the most talented Dutch poets of his generation. Unrest. Anxiety. Suspicion. Curiosity. This was the young poet's response to the question as to what motivated him as a poet. He debuted with the collection His Rise in the Suburbs. His second book, Vagrants (2002), was nominated for the prestigious VSB Prize. Among the prizes Schaffer has won are the C. Buddingh' prize, the Ida Gerhardt poetry prize, and the Jan Campert prize. Schaffer moved to South Africa in 2011 and he currently works as a lecturer at Stellenbosch University....

Sommaire:

Poetry. Winner of the 2021 P.C. Hooft-prize, the most important literary prize in The Netherlands for a whole oeuvre. Partly inspired by Chaka, a famous South African novel from 1931, written by Thomas Mofolo, the book charts the imaginary progress of the nineteenth-century statesman and tyrant, Shaka Zulu (1787-1828). Structured around a series of daydreams and major events in Zulu's life, the poet extracts Zulu from the historical past and moves him to the modern media age where speed dating, UFOs and effervescent pain-killers are the norm. The collection is hugely diverse, from lyrical poetry to tweets to wit.